I was wondering why you Merited
my vote.
That's 4 f**king merits! Completely waste, you may only need it to overtake Leo LOL.
Ideally, nobody should send merits in that topic. Practically, the rule states only that if you are nominated by someone at a category and you merit that post, that vote for you at that category will not be counted. So in theory you could send merits to other peoples voting for other users. Still, if you'd do that, it would only encourage others to act as well and also may some will not read the rules. As a consequence, they could merit posts where they were nominated, which would lead to have those votes not counted... It is best to not use merits inside that topic...
My realization [when all of us had discussion about merit sending on voting thread a few years back I guess?] was everything we did was to discourage awarding merit.
I can only do this when I feel that when writing a post the user was really guided by the description of a particular category.
Are you talking about the 4 merits you sent to LoyceV or in several votes the 1 merits to different members?
By doing any of it, you are endorsing your choice. It's encouraging others to find your reasons, your likeness, many will vote very close to your choice so that they can earn merit [hypothetical, I don't think anyone is going to do that for 1 to 4 merits LOL]. These merits can influence the natural practice of the voting and I think it was the exact reason we had the discussion long ago.
The worse fear is, by sending this merits you may able to attract attention of the voters. Consider Miss Bitcointalk category, just an example since it gives me some votes LOL. Someone is voting and they are not sure who to vote, they saw you are sending merits to several votes and instantly they are thinking about you and it is going to influence their voting.
